Higher Government Land Sales In 2013

The cooling measures as well as the soaring prices did not prevent the government to sell more land in 2013. However, due to the limitation of available sites, this year’s performance is expected to be not as good as last year’s.

Based on the data obtained by The Straits Times, Singapore Land Authority or SLA sold a total land parcel of 338.1 ha from January to December 31, 2013. This was an 11.2 % increase from 2012’s 33.9 ha performance. This has led to the boost of Government’s coffer by about $17 billion from 2012’s $15.5b. SLA is the national land registration authority in Singapore and it manages 14,000 ha of government land which is about 5,000 properties.

The land sales last year also underpinned the sales of private sector homes which contributed a sound $9.1b, exceeding the $7.9b sales to the public sector. While the figures seem to be good, deals obtained by the private sectors were still on the low compared with last year’s $10.4b. This was due to the decrease of lands sold under Government Land Sales program during the year. The boost in public sector sales was evident from the $7.9b sales in 2013 from the previous year’s $5.1b.

A spokesman from SLA also explained that the government sells public land to the private sectors for various purposes such as residential, industrial, commercial and other projects. On the other hand, it sells land to public agencies for progressive purposes like development of public housing and industrial estates.

The official data also showed that 16 residential parcels were turned to developers last year which was about $5.1b in sales. However, this was still comparatively short with the 2012’s 36 sold sites translating to $8.9b sales.

For its largest residential sale in 2013, GLS sold a 130,101 sq ft site located at Commonwealth Avenue. On the other hand, Mapletree has the largest industrial deal with the 1.18ha site seated at Tai Seng Street which earned them $120 million.

Frasers closed the biggest deals of mixed-used and commercial sites. The data showed a sale of $924 million for a commercial lot at Cecil Street with an area of 81,840 sqf, $1.4b for a parcel of land at Yishun Central 1 ranging to the size of 442, 235 sqf which is expected to be developed as integrated project.

Moving forward, experts already commented that 2014 will not yield to the same sales performance as 2013.